


Just Our Luck

by glitch_writes



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friends pulling fortunes together, Gen, New Years, With art by Starlity!, and making their own tradition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 02:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17256026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitch_writes/pseuds/glitch_writes
Summary: After praying for the usual - victory for Karasuno, good health for family and friends, a social life for Tsukishima - their new tradition together took flight.“Let’s pull fortunes!” Hinata shouted, bounding ahead before Yamaguchi could argue.Every year, Yamaguchi and Hinata meet up at the shrine on New Years. (From the Karasuno First Years Zines: "Birds of a Feather"!)





	Just Our Luck

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year!! Here's my piece for the [Karasuno First Years Zine, "Birds of a Feather"](https://twitter.com/karasunozine?lang=en)! This zine is absolutely GORGEOUS! It was such an honor to be a part of it - and also such an honor to have [Starlity](http://starlity.tumblr.com/) draw for it!! ...Wow, it's just striking me now that I have a collab with Starlity physically in my hands. I live a good life. If I really wanted, I could eat it. I won't, but the option is there.

Hinata held up his fortune like a medal, victorious and smiling brighter than the winter morning sun. “Great curse!”

“You beat me.” Yamaguchi showed Hinata his fortune. “Small curse.”

“That’s okay, Yamaguchi,” Hinata reassured him with a stinging thwack to his back. “We'll make our own luck anyway! Just like always.” 

Yamaguchi smiled. “That's right.”

*

They went to the shrine together for New Year’s for the first time two years ago. Just the two of them - not by any choice of theirs.

“Where's Kageyama?”

“Off being a jerk,” Hinata hmph’d, with a scowl reminiscent of its source. “Where's Tsukishima?”

Yamaguchi offered a shrug as faint and apologetic as his smile. “He wanted to stay home.” 

“Damn you, Tsukishima!” 

Hinata looked out of place in the gently blooming winter with his dark undershirt and orange hair. He was spring: energy and enthusiasm like a single, defiant flower sprouting strong amongst the feeble patches of fresh snow. 

Yamaguchi was starting to feel out of place himself for different reasons. “I shouldn’t have worn this,” he sighed. Arguing with himself over whether to wear his kimono took longer than putting it on. He didn’t want to be the only one wearing one, but what if Yachi showed up after all, and she was wearing one, and then she felt out of place if she was the only--

“Ooohh, it looks so cool on you!” Passersby would have thought Hinata was teleporting with how quickly he zoomed around Yamaguchi to get a better look; Yamaguchi certainly wondered if Hinata was capable of teleporting some days. 

After praying for the usual - victory for Karasuno, good health for family and friends, a social life for Tsukishima - their new tradition together took flight.

“Let’s pull fortunes!” Hinata shouted, bounding ahead before Yamaguchi could argue.

Yamaguchi hadn’t drawn Omikuji in years. What if he pulled something bad? If he didn’t pull a fortune, did that mean the bad stuff would never happen? Sure, maybe he’d get a good fortune instead, but was it worth the risk? It wasn’t like volleyball, he had no control over-

“Yamaguchi.” Hinata had wilted, sunken shoulders and face deathly pale as he held out the strip of paper. “Fortunes were a bad idea.” 

_ ‘Small curse’ _ greeted Yamaguchi’s eyes.

“If- If we tie it to a tree, the bad luck will stay with it!” 

“Y-yeah,” the husk that was once Hinata replied. 

“It’s- It’s okay!” Yamaguchi scrambled for anything to comfort him, arms and nerves alike flailing. “It’s only- It’s just- It doesn’t matter as long as you work hard, right?!” 

Hinata looked up at him hauntingly slowly. “Huh?”

“If you work hard, the bad luck won’t matter! Like… Like school! If you study, luck won’t hurt your… grades…” Bad example - Yamaguchi could have sworn Hinata was starting to shrivel. “Or, um… Volleyball!”

Hinata’s ears twitched up like an alert animal. If he was a rabbit in human disguise, that would explain his jumping superpower. “Volleyball?”

“If you practice hard, the bad luck won’t hurt you, right?” Yamaguchi smiled, pulling his own fortune with newfound confidence. “It’s not luck that makes the other teams tough.” 

Hinata sprouted back instantly. “Oooh, you’re right!” He almost smacked Yamaguchi and an unfortunate passerby when he thrust his arms into the air triumphantly. “We’ll make our own luck!” 

“Yeah! We’ll--”  _ ‘Great curse.’ _ “--just… make our own…”

Hinata pat his back reassuringly. “That doesn’t matter, cause you work super hard on your serves!”

That was… true. Luck wasn’t going to score ten points in one set with his serves - he was going to earn those points with his dedication. 

There was more to life than volleyball, though; a concept that would fly over Hinata’s head. “We should still tie them to a tree, just in case,” Yamaguchi replied, running his thumb over a crease in his fortune. 

“Nope!” Hinata snatched the paper from Yamaguchi’s hand. 

“Wait, Hinata!” Yamaguchi reached out in vain; Hinata was already gone. Maybe he really could teleport after all. 

Hopefully, Hinata could break bad luck the same way he broke physics, Yamaguchi thought with a defeated sigh as he started walking home to change into his tracksuit. If hard work had any chance to save him from a ‘great curse’, he was going to need all the practice he could get.

*

They met at the shrine again in their second year, and much to Yamaguchi’s surprise after last year’s curse, the circumstances were wonderfully familiar: countless victories under their belts and Nationals on the horizon. 

Well, mostly familiar. 

“Yamaguchiiiii! I thought you were gonna wear yours, too! Now I feel weird being the only one wearing this.” 

“It’s okay! You look good in your kimono,” Yamaguchi lied. Well, sort of lied. He did look good. He also looked like a small child forced to dress up by his parents. 

At the shrine, he didn’t pray for victory. He didn’t need prayers to win, not after a tough but fulfilling year of practice, of countless serves and countless more flying receives. He and Hinata nurtured the seeds of their skills on their own, watering their talents instead of praying for rain. They were going to dominate Nationals together because they earned it.

That didn’t stop the creeping anxiety as Hinata dragged him to pull fortunes.

“I thought fortunes didn’t matter?” Yamaguchi argued in vain as Hinata dragged him by the wrist. The year went by smoothly enough, but he wasn’t sure it was a great idea to mess with fate twice.

“We have to prove it!” The fire in Hinata’s eyes was far too fierce to deal with in the gentle morning. “I’m not going to lose to a fortune!”

Ah. Of course. It was a competition. Yamaguchi sighed; he should have known better. 

It wasn’t too awful of an idea, though.

Making fate a competition? It sounded… interesting. Exciting, even. 

Invigorated by Hinata’s contagious ambition and ready to face life head-on, he pulled his fortune, and-- “Future blessing?”

“I win!” Hinata held up his ‘half-curse’, beaming brightly enough to melt the snow. 

“But it’s not a competition...” Who was he kidding; when it came to Hinata, everything was a competition. “I got a blessing. I don’t-- I don’t fight that, right?” If he was making his own luck, then the blessing was because he made it, right? But that wasn’t how it worked with the curses, so a blessing must have meant… It meant… “I have no idea what this means.” He squinted at the fortune, searching for the answers to his self-inflicted moral dilemma in the blank spaces. “I wish I got a curse,” he sighed, much to the confusion of the bystander doing a double-take.

“But it doesn’t matter, right? Who cares what it says!” 

“Then why do you ‘win’ for getting a worse fortune?” 

“That’s because…” Hinata’s whole face furrowed with his brows; thinking wasn’t exactly his forte. “...Because now I’ll look cooler when I defy fate!”

He had a point there, sort of; it  _ sounded _ cool, at least. Yamaguchi smirked. “I’ll look cooler when I score ten points in a row.”

The fires of rivalry bloomed in Hinata’s eyes. “Bring it on.”

*

After a third year of dedication, sweat, and a slew of victories, they walked past the tree adorned in abandoned fortunes without hesitation, holding their curses with pride. Winning together was as much of a tradition as visiting the shrine together, after all, no matter the fortune.

Yamaguchi had only scored nine points in a row so far, but that was alright; he’d get 20 in a row at Nationals to make up for it.

“We'll make our own luck anyway! Just like always.” 

Nearly three years of knowing each other, and Hinata had grown in a myriad of ways. He was still the Hinata that Yamaguchi met back in their first year: lively, unstoppable, terrifyingly ambitious. But he was (somewhat) taller, wiser in his own unique way, and a force to make any powerhouse tremble. He was a sunflower standing strong in winter, a spirit as fierce and radiant as the summer sun and always reaching for the sky. Fate was no obstacle for him.

Yamaguchi liked to think that he helped Hinata grow. He liked to think that with Hinata’s influence, he’d blossomed the same way. “That’s right.” 


End file.
